Confused about PayPal Dispute Resolution Prodcess??

[ken13]

I was notified by PayPal that a customer had indicated that an item was not received...Here are the details and the time lines.

1.Day 1 - Item is Ordered.

2.Day 2 - Item is shipped via USPS First Class mail and I indicate expected delivery of Day 6.

3.Day 6 - PayPal notifies me that buyer has indicated that item was not received.  (This notification comes at about 8:30 am Eastern Time which is 5:30 am Pacific time which is where the package was sent and obviously if the delivery was to be made on Day 6  it would not have gotten there yet.)

So first thing I do is send an email to the buyer asking if he received the item.  He responds YES, item was received and is fine...that he had a problem with a DIFFERENT seller, not me.  So I then send an email asking him to contact PayPal and withdraw the item not received complaint against me.  He responds that he has been trying to contact PayPal to deal with all of this but has been unable to get a response from them and only gets "boilerplate" responses from them.

So I decide to go ahead and respond to his complaint at PayPal...planning to send an explanation of all of this to PayPal with copies of emails, etc.  When I go to the dispute, I find that this case was immediately escalated at the time the dispute was filed. (By the way I find it interesting that a buyer can not only file a complaint after only 6 days...but he can immediately escalate it without any evidence of having contacted the seller to try to resolve the issue.)

So when I look at the dispute there is nothing there that I can address directly.  All it says is there was an email from the buyer...but I am unable to see what was contained in that email.  Moreover and most troubling, I have no way to respond to this dispute except either to refund the money or show the tracking number (none exists in this case).  I am unable then to share with PayPal the information the buyer told me about this dispute.  I am unable to attach anything...unable to fax anything, etc.

So is there someway I can address the issues in this dispute at all?

[PayPal_Colin]

ken13--

Sorry to hear about this -- sounds like your buyer may be telling you one thing and doing another.

For item not received filings, buyers can create a dispute at any time within 45 days after payment, but they can't escalate that dispute to a claim until 7 days after payment.  Sellers can escalate the dispute to a claim as well.  In the vast majority of cases buyers wait to file, and they spend time in the dispute phase communicating with the seller before they escalate to a claim.

Once it becomes a claim, all the seller has to do to win is to provide a tracking number proving the item was delivered to the buyer.  Unfortunately in your case you don't have that.  There's no ability to upload images, files, provide supporting text, etc. as there is in a not-as-described complaint because the only issue in question is whether the item was received.

I think the buyer may be engaged in some questionable behavior here.  Maybe once they knew you didn't get tracking they filed an INR.  Why would they have escalated the case immediately?  They can cancel the case at any point with a single click, even in the claims phase.  They can also call up customer service at any point and speak to a live agent, who will walk them through the cancellation.  I'm unclear what "boilerplate" responses he or she is referring to.

Please email me at crule{at}paypal.com with the details and I'll look into it and see what's up.  I'll see if the buyer has done things like this in other transactions... usually buyer fraud is very easy to detect, because you can't do this more than once without PayPal catching on -- it's easy to spot.

Again, sorry for the frustration.  Hopefully we can get this worked out.

Colin

[ken13]

Thanks for the quick response...I will send you an email giving the specifics.

[tony6191]

i need to open a dispute.  bought something and paid thru paypal.  item was never delivered and the seller no longer responds to my email.  what do i do now?